He held the bottle in his hand, examined it carefully.
Shifting it ever so slightly sent the cargo inside sloshing this way and that, like the sea at China Beach, where he'd gone on R&R one time or another, but he couldn't say on which of his three tours.
His hand closed around the cap of the bottle, its seal still pristine. Just the slightest twist of his hand could open it, much less strength than that required to kill a man with a rifle, which he had done so many times.
He looked carefully at the thing. He waggled it just a bit, feeling the slosh of the fluid. Its brown ness was clear and butterscotchy, it beckoned him onward.
Yes, do it. One sip, just to take the edge off, to make the bad pictures go away, blunt the worries about money and prying reporters and TV cameras, to retreat to some sacred, private land of blur and wobble and laughter, where only good times are remembered.
Drink to the lost. Drink to the boys. Drink to the dead boys of Vietnam, drink to poor Donny. Drink to what happened to Donny and how Donny haunted him, how he had married Donny's wife and fathered Donny's child and done what could be done to resurrect Donny, to keep Donny still on this earth.
Yes, drink to Donny, and all the boys killed before their time for Veet Nam to stop communism.
Oh, how the bottle called him.
Fuck this, he thought.
I have a wife and a daughter and they are out on the range without me, and so I had best get to them. That is one thing left I can do.
He put the bottle back and climbed the stairs. His hip hurt, but what the fuck. He headed for the barn, his horse, and his wife and daughter.
CHAPTER twenty-six.
They rode up through the meadow, found the track through the pines and followed that, always trending upward. The air was cool, though not really cold, and the sun's presence in the east, over the mountains, gave the prospect of warmth.
Julie nuzzled her coat closer, tried to cleanse her thoughts of trouble and put her anger at her husband and what had happened to their life behind her. Her daughter, the better rider, galloped ahead merrily, the ugliness of the scene in the barn seemingly forgotten. Nikki rode so well, she had a gift for it, a natural affinity for the horses, and was never happier than when she was out in the barn with the animals, tending them, feeding them, washing them.
But Nikki's happiness was also somewhat illusory. As they neared the treeline and the ride across the high desert toward Widow's Pass and the trip to overlook the far valley, she drifted back to her mother.
'Mommy,' she said, 'is Daddy sick?'
'Yes, he is,' said Julie.
'Is he going to be all right?'
'Your father is as strong as ten horses and he has faced and beaten many enemies in his long and hard life.
He'll beat this one, too.'
'What is it. Mommy?' Nikki asked.
'It's a terrible disease called post-traumatic stress disorder.
It has to do with the war he was in. He was in heavy fighting and many of his very close friends were killed. He was strong enough to put that behind him and build us a very fine and happy life. But sometimes there are things that just can't be kept away. It's like a little black dog has escaped from the secret part of his brain and come out. It barks, it bites, it attacks. His old wounds are hurting, but also his memory keeps recalling things he thought it had forgotten. He has trouble sleeping. He is angry all the time and doesn't know why. He loves you very, very much, though. No matter what happens and how he acts, he loves you very much.'
'I hope he's all right.'
'He will be. He needs our help, though, and he needs the help of a doctor or something. He'll understand that eventually and get some help, and then he'll be better again. But you know what a stubborn man he is.'
The two rode on in silence.
'I don't like it when he yells at you. It scares me.'
'He's not really yelling at me, honey. He's yelling at the men who killed his friends and the men who sent him over there to fight that war and then walked away from it.
He's yelling for all the poor boys who got killed and never came back to the lives they deserved and were forgotten.'
'He loves you, Mommy.'
'I know he does, honey. But sometimes that's not enough.'
'He'll be all right.'
'I believe he will be, too. He needs our help, but he needs mostly to help himself, get some medication, find a way to take advantage of his very special skills and knowledge.'
'I can ride Western. I don't mind.'
'I know. It's not about that, really. It's about how mad he is at things he can't stop. We just have to love him and hope that he sees how important it is to get some help.'
They were out of the trees. The high chaparral was desolate, rock strewn, clustered with primitive forms of vegetation. Ahead, in the shadow of the snowcaps, the cut in the earth between mountains that was called Widow's Pass beckoned, and beyond it, after a course on a shelf of dirty rock and broken slope, a precipice from
